Podzimek suggests City Council committee violated open-meetings law

CEDAR RAPIDS - The City Council has a new Personnel Committee that apparently met last week without informing the public about it.

In fact, council member Justin Shields, who chairs the committee, didn't even tell council member Tom Podzimek, a member of the committee, about the meeting.

Shields and Podzimek don't see eye-to-eye on the issue that was on the committee's agenda.

The committee met to discuss the new job description for Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, on the eve of the council's formal vote to have Eyerly report directly to the council and not to City Manager Jim Prosser.

Podzimek opposes the idea and, along with council member Kris Gulick, voted against the move on the short end of a 7-2 vote at the council's Tuesday evening meeting.

Before the vote, Podzimek said he believed that Shields broke Iowa's opening-meetings law by not making public last week's committee meeting. Podzimek asked City Attorney Jim Flitz to weigh in on the matter, though Corbett said the matter wasn't significant enough to hold up Tuesday's vote.

Flitz didn't return an e-mail on Wednesday. Cassie Willis, the city's spokeswoman, said Flitz represents the City Council and so can't talk about the issue publicly.

Mayor Ron Corbett on Wednesday dismissed the open-meetings question as of little concern.

He said Shields had forgotten that he had appointed Shields, Vernon and Podzimek to the Personnel Committee, and Shields thought he would appoint the members, the mayor said.

Shields held the meeting with Vernon and council member Chuck Swore, all of a like mind on the Eyerly question.

Corbett said the Personnel Committee now will include Swore as well as the three others he appointed to it. The mayor said, too, that the committee would post meeting announcements and agendas in the future.